...Lastly, there was a bug when our AI evaluated the threat of fighters. NPCs didn't consider fighters as threatening as they should have. This bug has now been fixed, and NPCs will more often shoot at fighters.

I don't understand the support fighters getting such a large increase compared to light fighters. They're slow and except for Sirens not really used. I've never seen sirens that didn't die quite quickly when they needed to be dead, so tripling the sig radius seems like overkill.

How do NPCs shoot something more than 100% of the time? I don't think I've spent a second ratting with fighters out where they weren't shooting the fighters.

Except for those two things the changes look decent enough. Making fighters even more vulnerable when they're already the weakness of carriers doesn't seem like a wise move, but oh well.

Brutor Tribe

Minmatar Republic

Do any of you Devs even play, or understand how fighters currently operate in both PvE and PvP?

I mean seriously, wtf are you thinking with these changes? Do you want everyone to stop using carriers totally? Fighters are already easily countered by ECM/Webs and destroyer/frigates/SS and your plan is to make them even worse vs. cruisers/BCs and Rats?

Is your intent to revert them back to pre-carrier changes where no one even undocks them and we either go sub-cap or super blob? I am literally lost as to what went through your minds when proposing the aggro and sig radius changes...

Hogyoku

Goonswarm Federation

Can you please, for 1 time just stop with capitals shenanigans and focus with assault frigs and ships like stabber and some 2 mid-slotted ships?They are actually aweful, there is no point in flying them. PLEASE

Fweddit

The Initiative.

Increasing sig radius to improve the counter play options against fighters does have some merit but inceasing the sig radius by so much essentially is nerfing them to much IMO.

Look at the current fighters, Superiority squadrons chew right through and fighters (Heavy, Support, or LIght) with the added webs and target painters often provided in fights your fighters never make it back. I am speaking from experience on this as both the Receiver of the damage and the guy doing the defanging.

Also by giving fighters an increased sig radius you have also now given a Buff to the Thanatos and the Nyx which in turn is going to vastly favor these two hulls with their bonus FIghter HP while nerfing not only Fighters themselves but also all other Carriers, and Supercarriers. In addition to add to this, the +10k M3 to the Wyvern and the Hel would not make a difference in making them more viable to be used compared to the Nyx.

I honestly felt fighters were in a good spot with the exception of the Webification and ECM Support Fighters as they provide no additional value or reason to use them in a fight due to the majority of the time Long range webs and ECM is already on grid with the Fleet.

And finally the Burst projectors, while off to a good start with the added duration still, Does not give a good enough reason to still fit them to a super. Speaking from personnel experience using my Hel, whenever a animation of a burst projector being used is shown in space, a Hostile fleet simply burns away from the area that would be affected by any Projector. This is especially troublesome when using the Warp Disruption Burst Projector trying to keep tackle. In order to promote more use of the various Burst Projectors I would ask you if it would be worthwhile to look into eitherA) Getting rid of the Burst Projector Animation that is shown while the projector is being activated.ORB) Reducing the Activation time of a Burst Projector to give an enemy fleet less time to react to whatever Projector is being used.

DeadMan's Squad

Test Alliance Please Ignore

So, if we are going to nerf the crap out of already fairly weak fighters can we at least remove the ability to make a 3b carrier worthless or 30b super worthless with 2-3 5m griffins?

Like why is ECM even a thing on that. You can't ECM a dread or defang one either. I had a corp mate permajam 3 fighter squads on a carrier we caught with 1 griffin. I really don't understand the balance logic at play here.

It's already ridiculously easy to de-fang a [super] carrier. Rats also already eat fighters up. Not to mention just what an active click fest using fighters is! Watching an Ishtar rat while watching a movie, or even better watching a buddy rat with 8 ishtars while watching a movie :-P. But you chose fighters to nerf and make harder...

These changes bring Fighters closer in-line with the signature of Heavy Drones.

Bolded the important part. Light Fighters and Heavy Drones now have the same signature radius at 100m. Light Fighters having at minimum the same signature radius as Heavy Drones makes sense. Prior to the the Capital/Fighter rework, individual fighters had a signature radius of 125m.

Tara Read wrote:

Ever try running a Fortress without an entire squadron dying? Try it.

There are L5 missions that can kill 2 or 3 of your fighters in a squadron if you're unlucky. The Fortress is not one of them.

Horde Vanguard.

Pandemic Horde

Fighters are very vulnerable as they´re now. You have ECM, Tracking Disruption working on them and in most cases you have no chance to kill a cruiser going 2500 m/s without support as it will be out of range as soon as the mwd ability runs out.

Application on them also isn´t really an issue, just look at how easily a fighter squad is defanged by SS fighters. A Hurricane with 425s cannot apply to them? Well it cannot apply to a Interceptor squad either.

And last but not least you make the already most vulnerable ffighter types (support fighters) even more vulnerable by giving them even bigger sig then heavy fighters.

Interhole Revenue Service

2. Carriers were supposed to be long range supportive caps. By increasing the sig you are forcing the carriers to deploy only at point balnk range.

3. Can you please adress the problem of capital cap injectors instead? They made caps neut-proof and that means its nigh impossible to kill a cap in whspace.

4. Carriers are a joke compared to dreads. In null space superiority is the only current PvP use. In whspace they maybe feed cap and only in home defense. In whspace, where you can only field up to 3 caps away from home, you never ever use the mass for a carrier. Why use a ship that has just 30%dps?

5. Carriers cannot be used for PVE in whspace. They trigger an escalation and contibute very little.

So yeah, huge cry for help here. Can you please review the cap use in whspace for both pvp and pve?

Footloose

Phoebe Freeport Republic

Fighters can already die damn quick in PvP and require constant micromanaging in PvE, sig changes this large and a change to aggression at the same time seems to be completely overkill. If you're going to make changes can you please do so a little more gradually so you don't end up risking carriers becoming useless overnight...

Omega Nebula BattleWorks

Sig radius increased on fighters? NPCs not shooting them enough? Heck I can't KEEP NPCs off of my fighters currently, even battleships are ripping my fighters up during ratting. This is going to make carrier ratting not worth it at all anymore. The cost of replacing fighters already is approaching the ticks I get from running them.

This is also widening the gap between carriers and dreads. As said already, carriers are a joke compared to dreads, now we're reinforcing that point. I see NPCs ignore drones more often than my fighters. Time to shelf it I guess, it has no more use for me in pvp or pve.

Pandemic Horde Inc.

Pandemic Horde

These changes bring Fighters closer in-line with the signature of Heavy Drones.Lastly, there was a bug when our AI evaluated the threat of fighters. NPCs didn't consider fighters as threatening as they should have. This bug has now been fixed, and NPCs will more often shoot at fighters.

Can you guys elaborate on your intentions relating to carriers in a PVE environment? Obviously, EVE is very PVP centric, but using a carrier in null anomalies seem to be pretty much required to get proficient with the interface so you can eventually feel comfortable dropping your carrier in PVP. Your interface update made carrier ratting "fun" again at the same time eliminating the multiboxing carrier issues of the past. Are you unhappy with the level of isk earned by carrier ratting?

Every single one of these ships have large bonuses to BOTH drone HPs and drone speed (velocity or MWD). This means the base stats of heavy drones are worthless for comparison because almost no one uses them at those HP/speed to sig radius ratios. These bonuses are what consistently keeps these heavy drones alive, therefore keeping there use affordable.

With carriers, you choose between a very small HP bonus (Thanatos) or a very small speed bonus (Nid) and that's it. Also, loosing fighters is much more expensive.

I think you are getting a lot of negative feedback from these changes because we all thought carrier risk/reward was in a pretty solid place currently. Don't get me wrong, I totally get the bug fix thing...but the combined sig radius change seems like you will be destroying a really fun activity.